Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday February 06, 2011 @04:49PM
from the dare-to-be-stupid dept.

An anonymous reader writes "From the Wired article: 'If educators in New Mexico want to teach evolution or climate change as a "controversial scientific topic," a new bill seeks to protect them from punishment. House Bill 302, as it's called, states that public school teachers who want to teach "scientific weaknesses" about "controversial scientific topics" including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — "other scientific topics" may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson. Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.'"

+1. Many public-school science teachers are not even educated as scientists. Actual scientists can command salaries higher than what teachers are paid, so very few people who graduate with a science degree are willing to work in a public high school. This means many teachers are liberal arts folks who got a certificate in education. Many, perhaps even most of these folks still try to do a good job. But some fraction of them bring the same ignorance to bear as in the general population.

If you can pay $20k a year to get a degree and make $40,000 a year teaching high school biology, gosh, why would you want to do actual science??

For one thing, science is hard. Many of my grad school classmates have dropped out or "mastered out" as they were tired of research. Others went all the way but knew from the start that research wasn't for them and/or wanted to teach. Most programs require some teaching, many students find they like it much better. For some it's a backup, they finish their degree but aren't good enough at it to do it as a career, or find it pays better than taking a postdoc.
When looking at a postdoc position, spending 60 hours a week in lab, versus less or equal pay teaching for less hours a week with better benefits, they might be swayed.
Lastly, many grad school science programs pay the student to do research, so it's not that they're paying $20k a year, it's that they're getting paid $17k per year to get a degree then moving up to $40k. They might have student loans from undergrad to pay off, but that's true no matter what you're teaching.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. If you can't cut it doing work in your field, I believe you have no business teaching it.

They're largely different skill sets. Those who "can't" might not be able to design experiments to save their lives, or are terrible at keeping track of their experiments, but do great with understanding the background, or theories.

It's exactly this type of BS that enables people to challenge well supported theories like evolution.

The hypothesis of global warming is in a similar stage to the Theory of Evolution as it existed 150 years ago. When you equate them, you discard 150 years of investigation, learning, prediction, verification, experimentation, understanding and opportunities for falsification.

Global warming should stand on it's own, without the need to bring unrelated science fact to justify itself.

Right now, there is a consensus that while there are a few outliers, the evidence as a whole points to the warming of the planet by a fraction of a degree in recent history. This is good. What I would like to see now is the very serious separation of global warming from 'man made' global warming in public discussions.

They are separable variables and should be very clearly treated as such. In every single discussion.
Oh, let's also drop the new fad of calling the hypothesis "climate change". The climate ALWAYS changes. Global warming is the only of the two descriptions that actually describes the hypothesis.

Global warming switched to climate change when they realized that the warming would stop the NW current, which would actually cause the climate to cool in places where the ocean currents normally provide temperate climates (like Britain). See, they discovered that the name as it was was actually deceptive, so they changed it.

The theory of evolution set out to explain a phenomenon we already knew existed. AGW is impressive because it predicted a phenomenon we did not know was going to occur [wikipedia.org]. I don't see any reasonable alternative explanations for the warming we've observed, so the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the best explanation we have. We have over 100 years of investigation, learning, prediction, verification, experimentation, understanding and opportunities for falsification for AGW. It sounds about as we

No, climatologists certainly do not deny that the climate changes naturally. Feel free to point out any that make such a denial. Your claim is simply a straw man argument [wikipedia.org] against global warming.

Indeed. Most of the scientists working in 'climate science' seem to deny that the climate changes naturally and blame any change on humans.

That is total bullshit.

Climate scientists don't deny the fact that climate changes naturally, especially over long time periods like tens of thousands of years. In fact, as I'm sure you're aware, they are the ones who proved that in the first place.

Climate scientists have also proved that climate can also be changed by human activity. There is a lot of evidence to sugges

Even young Earthers agree to certain climate change events (global floods of Noah).

This is funny. A perfect example of a global and disastrous climate change, caused by humans
persisting in their errors. It is funny that many of the same people who read Bible the most manage
to learn from it the least.

Anyone who made a discovery of enough significance to overturn anthropogenic climate change would have made a reputation for himself enough to secure a funded career. Research is a competitive environment, and that would give you a huge advantage over those competing for funding - you don't make a name for yourself simply by supporting he orthodoxy. Astrologers, on the other hand, rely on the belief that astrology is true to make money.

Behe's claims were utterly demolished during the Dover Trial. He seemed tragically unaware that IC was in fact predicted decades ago, and does in fact have a perfectly naturalistic explanation. Behe may be a biochemist, but the only reason he even has a job is in large part due to tenure, and in no small part because you won't find a single actual publication in a journal by him expounding on his ID theories.

I don't know what the official term for it is, but I call the solution to these "irreducible complexity" arguments the "A B C evolution sequence":

Lets say a scientist looks at a modern organism and sees that the organism has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?

The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.

Practical examples have been investigated by scientists. I believe the canonical example of such a complex inter-dependent system are the proteins involved in blood clotting. A significant number are required, and the whole process fails without any one of them. Obviously, at some point, blood clotting was achieved with just one protein, which then become two, then three, and then the original protein was lost, etc... The evolutionary steps involved can be investigated by looking at the blood clotting proteins in related species, looking for the patterns and commonalities up the evolutionary tree.

m has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?

The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.

Putting this concept into a simplified list.

A works well enough

The combination of A and B work better than just A

The combination of A, B and C work better than the combination of A and B

The combination of B and C work better than the combination of A, B and C

\Why would you bring God into this. I never mentioned God. It's no wonder why religious people get offended when an evolutionary discussion is brought up. Assholes like you try to use evolution to disprove their religion, even though many people, scientists included believe in both God and evolution. It is possible to support two points of view.

Lets say a scientist looks at a modern organism and sees that the organism has a complex organ or chemical system, or whatever, made of two parts, B and C. Neither B, nor C will work individually. How did this evolve?

The explanation is that the organism originally had a much simpler organ, or chemical, or whatever. Call it 'A'. At some point, a variant evolved that had an enhancement added to A, call it B. Now, B doesn't work by itself, but A does. Together, A & B are better than A alone. At some later point, A gets a mutation, and becomes 'C', which doesn't work by itself, but works together with B. So now you have B & C, neither of which work together, yet it was possible for evolution to take "baby steps" to get to that point.

Great! Now if you could just provide an example of an creature who has an organ necessary for the creature to survive, that is obviously adequate or the creatur

The theory of evolution stands because no matter what people throw at it, they haven't disproved it. There is no better alternate theory that explains more than the current theory does or has better predictive power. There is no other theory that is as useful in practice as the theory of evolution. Modern life sciences and many of the amazing things they are able to do today are based upon it. When the "non-believers" can come up with a new theory that explains all the mountains of observed evidence bet

Personally, I believe in evolution. My problem is the way it is taught. It's not entirely the fault of those who set the credentials either. Because so many "theists" feel it is a threat to their beliefs, they insist on teaching "God did it" in the classroom. That's wrong. However, the problem comes in where people want to limit the teacher's ability to point out some of the shortcomings of evolution. And even in mentioning that evolution could possibly have shortcomings, there are people who would re

Why would you bring God into this. I never mentioned God. It's no wonder why religious people get offended when an evolutionary discussion is brought up. Assholes like you try to use evolution to disprove their religion, even though many people, scientists included believe in both God and evolution. It is possible to support two points of view.

Indeed. Since religion is not a scientific proposition it is impossible to "disprove" it. All he said was that there was no need for a God for the system to work. If you want to believe in one, fine. Go ahead. But there's no need for the rest of us in order for our view of the world to be internally consistent. Now for the question at hand.

Great! Now if you could just provide an example of an creature who has an organ necessary for the creature to survive, that is obviously adequate or the creature would have gone extinct, evolving two more organs independently of eachother, neither of which form any function on their own, hanging on to these two separate, worthless organs, they both combine to perform the already adequate function of another organ, AND, the original organ slowly being evolved out of existance.

No, that's not what he said. The animal started with an "adequate" organ A. Acquired organ B which in combination with A worked better. Then acquired (doesn't have to be

But not completely. How does evolution explain a four chambered heart?

But not completely. Quantum theory, GTR, and modern gravitation theory all produce similar predictions in weak gravitational fields, but they diverge as the field becomes strong. How does modern gravitation theory explain that?

What possible evolutionary advantage has writing given man?

Likewise...for what possible reason, according modern gravitation theory, could something else like writing that has nothing at all to do with gravity happen?

And the fact that we are talking about it here proves that it truly is a controversial subject. Maybe not to you, but then again, gay marriage is not controversial to gay man. Illegal immigration is not controversial to an illegal alien. Lawsuits against P2P grandmas without computers is not controversial to a RIAA lawyer. Just because it's not a controversy to you doesn't mean it's not controversial to some very bright and stupid people, alike.

Though many people reading this won't admit it, the fact that I have posted my qualms with gravitation theory here proves that there is a controversy And that controvery is this: is the gravitational force explained by gravitation theory, or is it due to Intelligent Falling? This is big, heady stuff. And I'm not saying I know that gravitation theory is wrong and Intelligent Falling is right, but I should have the right to ask (in taxpayer-funded public school science classrooms in a country founded on separation of church and state), shouldn't I?

Ok, enough mimicking your credulous nature. IC and ID are not scientific theories because they make no testable predictions. Without proposing a competing theory, you are essentially saying, "We shouldn't buy evolution theory because it doesn't explain everything! We should ignore the many useful predictions it makes and by the way I have nothing else of value to contribute in its place but still that's what we should do." Well, in case you missed my point above, neither does any other scientific theory. It turns out theories don't have to explain every single thing in order to be useful.

Of course IC and ID make testable predictions. Namely that we would show signs of being intelligently designed. Some examples include, after perfecting the Octopus eye, the intelligence would be applied to the human eye. The human spine would not be subject all the design errors that are in it. Teeth would last a lifetime or at least be intelligently replaced. There is a huge list of predictions with most of them having been proved false.So IC and ID are scientific theories much like the ether or the theory

"No, one or a few of Behe's claims may have been demolished, but I know many physicists, engineers and biologists that can not "demolish" the idea of IC, even in their own minds."

Irreducibly complex systems in biology were first predicted by H. J. Muller in 1918 to be a consequence of evolution. See talk.origins [talkorigins.org] for a quick summary, or a review [don-lindsay-archive.org] of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" from 1997. There's a (lot of) reasons why Behe wasn't taken seriously back when "Darwin's Black Box" was published in 1996 and th

How does evolution explain a four chambered heart?... Why would we form all the necessary components to be able to form words without the brain power necessary to process speech?... What possible evolutionary advantage has writing given man? We are the only creature ever on the planet to be able to read and write, so it obviously has never had an evolutionary advantage... why are we able to do it. What is the evolutionary point.

At best, even if there were no current explanations for those things, you've merely listed some interesting avenues for future research.

Whole organs systems can not be formed by random mutation, and they don't work without the entire system....but some changes have to come in sets or they never work. Evolution will never explain that.

Now you're just asserting things. I know your intuition is strongly telling you "That can't happen!", but if you're going to deal with modern science you have to learn to deal with things being counter-intuitive.

I have never heard an adequate explanation as to how complex systems can evolve.... Just because it's not a controversy to you doesn't mean it's not controversial to some very bright and stupid people, alike.

Among people who don't really know a lot about evolution, sure, it's controversial. Among people who actually know what they're talking about there is no controversy.

How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? Take away one chamber and the whole thing doesn't work. Add a chamber to a three chamber heart and it fails. Nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart.

See here [livescience.com]. Reptiles have a 3 chambered heart, but some (turtles) show the beginning of the formation of a septum separating the ventricle in two chambers. An article in Nature back in 2009 described the discovery of the genetic mutation that led to complete separation - I couldn't find the link to the Nature article itself, but here's [sciencedaily.com] a digest and here [pandasthumb.org] are a few quotes. The most important conclusion there is IMHO that there exists a relatively minor genetic change which leads to the formation of the extra heart chambers, advantageous for natural selection

Behe has been debunked. Get over it. He has no standing in the evolutionary community, he is a laughing stock at Baylor and only tenure and the fact he doesn't use the university "letterhead" so to speak keeps him in a job. I'll repeat, he has never ever ever ever published this in any peer-reviewed journal. On top of being an anti-intellectual liar who only manages to fool hopeless morons, he's also a coward.

You've just demonstrated the REAL danger of ID and teaching it to impressionable students.Instead of searching for explanations for the examples above... you are content to accept that science "will never" be able to answer those inquiries.

It MAY actually be true that science cannot answer how the 4 chamber heart evolved. But does that mean that we should simple stop searching for the answer?

You'll find that science is great for this kind of thing. The 4 chamber heart is just the next example in the long

How does evolution explain a four chambered heart? Take away one chamber and the whole thing doesn't work.

Yes it does. It just doesn't work in organisms that have adapted themselves to having four chambers, because our pulmonary circulatory system can't handle high pressure flows. A Fontan procedure can mechanically produce a very functional three-chambered system in humans.

If there were no flying squirrels/bats, etc. you'd probably also be arguing that wings are irreducibly complex. After all, why would evolution cause an animal to lose a perfectly good set of limbs, just to spend thousands of years developing wings capable of actually flying. Fortunately, we can see dozens of examples in nature of rudimentary wings at different stages of development that make it very obvious how it happens. Despite all this, people, including respected scientists, still once upon a time tried to insist that the feathers on Archeopteryx were fake, even though it obviously has wings (if not wings, then it has a ridiculously long finger). The respected scientist in that case was curmudgeon Fred Hoyle, who coined the term 'big bang' (although he disagreed and originated the competing steady state theory), and did the important early work on stellar nucleosynthesis. Notably lacking among his credentials are paleontology and geology, and his debunking of Archeopteryx has since been thoroughly debunked (everything he claimed about the fossil was a misconception, not to mention that too many other Archeopteryx and other feathered dinosaur fossils have been found since then). For some reason, people with an agenda to push can always find these supposedly logical impossible puzzles in development.

To address the points you made in your discussion, I'd like to start by correcting your misconception that an important part of evolution is that "the strong survive while the weak die off". It's not survival of the strongest, it's survival of the _fittest_. Evolution isn't some path to godlike perfection. Evolution is just a way of describing a system of trial and error that reacts to the environment (an environment that, by the way, is made up of other organisms that are always evolving). Any genetic change that makes an individual stronger (such as 25% larger muscles), doesn't necessarily make the individual fitter because there could be a drought and a sudden lack of food and the individual with more mass to support isn't going to be able to get enough food to survive and is therefore less fit (or, in some conditions it will be able to get more food and will be more fit - a lot depends on random circumstance). Not to mention the other important fact that the individual with the bloated muscles or increased size due to a mutation may find itself without the skeletal structure to support its muscles or with a circulatory system the design of which doesn't scale up with the demands of its increased size. Heart problems are very common in human giants, even though bipedal creatures massively larger than them have existed. It's obvious then that most "beneficial" mutations are not actually beneficial to start with. Instead, most of them are survived rather than increasing survivability. Other mutations, or genetic combinations with existing mutations, can later combine to actually confer genetic advantage and then the bearers of the beneficial genetic legacy can go on to supplant the rest of the population, or use their newfound ability to spread out into a new environmental niche. Obviously evolution isn't just one process, simply illustrated in a textbook, it's a blanket term for an entire set of feedback processes.

On to four chambered hearts. You ask how evolution explains it, then go on to claim that "nowhere is there any type of record, fossil or otherwise that explains how a four chambered mammalian heard evolved from a three chambered reptilian heart". If you'd open your eyes, you'd see that there are plenty of examples of birth defects in which even human infants are born with extra heart chambers. They usually are not functional, and usually lead to early death. If there's a genetic predisposition to such defects, and conditions are right, entire populations can exist with the same defect. They don't have to be fittest, they just have to be viable. Then, eventually, other mutations may occur that improve the functionality of the mutation, up to the point where it actually provides an advantage over

While it is true that evolution at the k-12 level(and often at a decent slice of undergrad) is overly simplistic, I'm not sure that avoiding over-simplification in lower level science classes is even possible. The hairy details of the field are such that even PhD'ed full-time researchers in biology related fields tend to have specializations in subsets of the field. A full knowledge of the field, and its controversies, would require nearly superhuman effort, full time. Not Happening in 9th grade Bio.

This isn't evolution specific, of course. K-12 physics is usually Newtonian, which isn't just overly simplistic; but known to be false. However, when it comes down to teaching kids how to apply mathematical models to physical situations, albeit with imperfect accuracy, or wait until they finish tensor calculus to even broach the subject, Newtonian physics usually wins. Somehow, we don't have godbots battering down the doors and demanding that "Newtonism" be presented as a controversial theory... K-12 chemistry, while less overtly false than k-12 physics, is usually heavily simplified and pretty much applies (approximately) to idealized ionic compounds, some of the better behaved transition metals, and ideal gasses. Again, as bad or worse than k-12 bio; but uncontroversial.

Math, while more likely to be correct within its limited scope, also tends to be essentially dogmatic in its approach. You might get a few axioms and proofs in geometry; but you pretty much get to take all the properties of numbers on faith until you make it to number theory sometime in college.

It is definitely true that low-level science education is, from a factual/current state of the discipline perspective, reductive, false, or both(and this is why they should really spend more time instilling inquiry, experimentation, hypothesis, testing, conclusions, etc. rather than rote "facts" that are mostly known to be wrong); but that isn't why K-12 evolutionary biology is controversial. Virtually no part of a K-12 curriculum is immune to the charges of excessive simplicity; but only in the cases where the curriculum is also ideologically inconvenient does that become a major issue(mostly evolution, occasionally American history or the English class reading list)...

An excellent post. Were I currently in possession of mod points, they would be yours.

I think the religious lobby pushing this 'controversy' are perhaps smarter (or at least better manipulators) than we give them credit for. They know that we (and by 'we' in this context I mean the general scientific community) would be negating our own arguments if we were not to accept objective facts. Those on the religious side of the argument have realised that if they hit us with facts (such as that evolution is a simplification), however out-of-context or irrelevant they may be, we will always be willing to concede to those facts - our logical integrity gives no other option - but in a political environment, conceding that the opposition's point is valid (whether or not it supports their overall argument) is almost seen as tantamount to endorsing their viewpoint.

K-12 physics is usually Newtonian, which isn't just overly simplistic; but known to be false.

False is not the correct term, it is not 100% accurate. Newtonian mechanics is an excellent model with valuable real world applications. In fact, in most cases nobody is going to bother with quantum mechanics or general relativity to solve engineering problems that can be solved with Newtonian mechanics with more than enough accuracy to produce the desired results.

Other than that I think you are making an important point, you can't teach PhD level courses for every subject to every student. You can teach enough to create an informed and educated society that can have a meaningful discourse which is not what we currently have on the subject of evolutionary science. Most of the discourse from those who question evolutionary science is from individuals who don't have even the most basic clue as to the principles of evolutionary science and simply regurgitate pseudo-science garbage some quack fed them.

I have nothing against either classical mechanics or selective, pragmatic, reductionism(indeed, this is an extremely valuable problem solving skill, and teaching people how to determine what facts they can ignore/fudge and what facts will bite them in the ass is an under-emphasized and highly worthy endeavor...) Also, Newton was both a genius and a badass, so I wouldn't mess with him.

My point was just that essentially everything, even in a well designed and rigorous K-12 curriculum, is highly reductive o

Geocentricism actually works reasonably well, for many terrestrial applications, as well. It starts to break down when you want to venture too far beyond earth orbit(though even a trip to the moon might be doable); but any of the late-pre-Copernican astronomers could handle navigation and timekeeping at least as well as any heliocentrist until at least Kepler. Even then, the differences are small enough to be of limited relevance for many applications.

Irreducible Complexity suffers from major logical flaws. The main premise of it is that some things in nature are so complex that if a part were removed, they could not function in the same way and thus could not have evolved as such. One example used is the bacterial flagella [wikipedia.org] which aids in locomotion. It is comprised of many parts. Behe argued how could something like that been created by evolution alone as missing any of the parts would cause it not to function as a motor. As other scientists pointed out, the flagella may evolved from organelles that had nothing to do with locomotion. They pointed out that the flagella may have evolved under a different purpose like the Type III Secretion system. The Type III Secretion system [wikipedia.org] contains a subset of the same parts as the flagellum. The Type III secretion systems are like syringes that inject poison and could have been a predecessor to the flagellum. Or they could have shared a common predecessor. This is called exaptation [wikipedia.org] and is a well understood evolutionary principle. ie. Wings didn't start out as wings; they might evolved from specialized arms which evolved from specialized feet.

The other problem with Irreducible Complexity is that is is a negative argument against evolution. It is not a positive argument for creationism. As Judge Jones III put in the Kitzmiller trial:

the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's

Because many like Behe have long argued that if evolutions fails in any way, creationism must there be correct. That is a logical fallacy. In the best light, if irreducible complexity disproves evolution, that's all it does. It does not prove creationism.

A major problem for Behe was the examples he and others have said were irreducibly complex have been shown by the scientific community as not irreducibly complex. The flagellum is one. The human immune system is another. Behe argued many years ago in Darwin's Black Box that science has no answer to how the human system evolved. However since the publication of his book, many scientists have done a great deal of research into the matter and have come up with plausible hypotheses. On the stand, Behe refused to admit that he was wrong even when presented with the research.

Evolutionary biology should be taught exactly as it is understood and known by those who have actually entered and studied the field

If you suggest we should blindly accept authority like that, then it's hard to compete with the religious members of the community who will point to their own authorities.

Instead of only providing children with facts that must be learned because someone else said so, it would be healthy to encourage a more Socratic approach to science. If teaching them facts equips them for th

"Critical thinking and the scientific method should have come up in some introductory courses in middle school to provide students with the tools necessary to evaluate scientific theory, observations and conclusions."

The idea that you can you can teach evolutionary biology in a high school level course to the degree necessary for students to honestly critique the scientific evidence and provide solid scientific conclusions is absurd. If students are giv

Which Christians are you talking about? All religious people I know (Catholics, since I'm from a Catholic country) recognise the Theory of Evolution. The very own Vatican recognises the Theory of Evolution. Although I hate religion, there's some difference between a "Christian" and a brainwashed, ignorant nut-job.

Quite the contrary! Creation and Intelligent Design would, in New Mexico, arguably fall under the umbrella of "other scientific topics," which means no teacher could be reprimanded for teaching the serious scientific weaknesses in those "theories." Sounds like they'll open the door for the real teachers to talk freely about how absurd arguments against evolution are.

Except then those teachers would be reprimanded/fired/sued for slighting the religious beliefs of others while acting as a representative of the state. And then we'd have to hear the "news" outlets (both sides) lose their minds over it for weeks.

How is it anti-science to teach the weaknesses of a theory? Shouldn't we already be doing that? Seems to me that is exactly what we should do. Put all the facts on the table , describe the theories and teach the children to think through the problems that exist with all of theories instead of being mindless robots that simply regurgitate the flavor of the month.

First of all, no one is saying that a theory's weaknesses can't be discussed, but these kinds of laws are not designed to do that, they are designed to give weight to Creationism and ID. It has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with giving a false sense of weakness in scientific theories. Evolutionary theory has issues, but then again so does gravity, or any other theory.

A second point is that there are not enough hours in the day to give kids more than a brief survey of, say, evolution. You're notion that teachers are equipped to take children through a theory like evolution in that detail, or that children who are even less well equipped can hope to comprehend. What you want is absurd, but seems fairly standard for Creationists who try to make the unreasonable sound reasonable.

Beyond all of that, of course, is that this law is on the face of it unconstitutional. This was all dealt with a few decades ago, and much of it was reiterated and expanded on by the Dover Trial.

It isn't anti-science to expose limitations of a theory. In fact, theories are bolstered only due to their ability to rule out alternative hypotheses (rejecting the null hypothesis).

However, it is anti-science to introduce an idea that is unfalsifiable and call it science. Unfalsifiability is one of the major tenants of science, the scientific process, and theory creation and development. In order for a proposition to become a theory it needs to be testable. Creationism is founded upon belief. I cannot tell a student to go find evidence for creationism. I can, however, tell someone to go find evidence either FOR or AGAINST evolution. However, evolution has so much evidence in favor of it, it is a generally accepted framework for the origin of species. It doesn't claim perfection, no scientific process does. Indeed, the rise of post-positivism as a major philosophical and scientific building block is a testament to this. Post-positivism claims that since humans are imperfect it is impossible to measure any phenomenon perfectly (measurement is asymptotic with Truth). Ultimately, the Bible provides merely circular reasoning for Creationism as a possible scientific explanation. There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of God or any mechanisms that he might provide (creationism). Therefore, it is unfalsifiable and cannot be taught as an alternative explanation to any scientific principle, theory, or proposition since creationism ultimately reduces to faith.

When you are educating students on basic science and teaching scientifically accepted theories it absolutely is anti-science to turn around and tell the students that it all may not be true and they will have to rule out alternative hypotheses before they should accept evolutionary science even though most of the students will never have the necessary education to effectively analyse evolutionary evidence themselves.

And lets be honest, it is anti-science because the objective of these efforts to teach wishy washy science to students in public schools is not intended to produce a generation of scientifically astute students, the purpose is to undermine confidence in science and perpetuate ignorance.

Okay, first of all. Things in science are not "proven" in the sense that there is some point when you say "Well, that's 100% positive". As much as any theory can be proven evolution has been proven.

Secondly, "it's still a theory" indicates a woeful ignorance of what a scientific theory is. Theory, in science, isn't some wild-assed guess. It is well supported by multiple streams of evidence. What you're committing is the etymological fallacy, conflating two different definitions of a word.

As to the evidence for evolution, it is rather vast. If you have any doubts on that point, visit http://talkorigins.org/ [talkorigins.org].

If there was a consistent downwards trend in typical global temperature despite increasing CO2 concentration (if other factors, such as solar irradiance, stayed constant). There, that wasn't too hard. Alternatively, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations didn't increase despite our emissions (i.e. there were feedbacks). Or, rather less likely, if someone did a new measurement and determined that CO2 didn't absorb IR after all.

while ONE test that turns up FALSIFIED is usually fatal to a theory. (If it won't kill a theory it isn't a proper test.)

Meanwhile, outside an "introduction to Karl Popper" book, pieces of scientific evidence are often not 100% in favour of one theory or another, especially in a system with many different things interacting. At most, they merely have a "most likely interpretation". There was no one piece of evidence that singly led to AGW theory, and there's to unlikely to be one that singly disproves it.

The sceptics find flaws and outright fraud in the models and datasets and they are attacked and suppressed

No they didn't, and if you think they did you weren't looking closely. And suppressed? Last I checked Watts was still publishing his website, and sceptics still get disproportionately large coverage in the mainstream press.

I find it strange that you mention AGW and "climate change" but don't go back to the "greenhouse effect" as I think the transition to "climate change" is more nuanced than a simple rebranding.

First we had the "greenhouse effect", the relatively simple principle that increased C02 in the atmosphere would reduce energy escaping into space much like glass in a greenhouse.
Then we had AGW which was the start of the examination of the consequences of the "greenhouse effect", the major effect being that the glo

I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind? Here in my country school curricula are rigid, limited and biased government mandated crap. As long as the teacher doesn't lie/make things up, teaching the kids to question everything and see both sides of an issue will only do them good. The intelligent ones will eventually make their own decision about who's right or wrong, and the stupid ones will believe what they'll believe anyway...

I'm going to be downmodded to death, but isn't science about keeping an open mind?

Well there's "open mind" and then there's "absurd". You wouldn't sanction another instructor walking into the room and trying to offer the students "alternate options" like a flat earth or the moon made of cheese.

"Open Mind" is for topics that have not been thoroughly figured out. It's good for things that we don't fully understand yet, to encourage different opinions and explore ways to get closer to the truth.

Once all reasonable doubt has been settled, it's time to accept reality and stop placing any credibility in what's written in some 2000 yr old book.

Things like Creationism aren't science, and therefore do not belong in a science class. They should, however, be discussed in Philosophy class. Oh, wait, that's right. Most US schools do not teach Philosophy anymore.

Seeing both sides of an issue is a easier to do when there are two sides to an issue. We are as confident in the presence of evolution as we are in the presence of gravity, but we don't have our science teachers expressing weaknesses with that particular phenomenon despite the fact that birds are regularly seen flying. I'm confident that one could come up with any number of theories as to why we are pulled towards the ground (the Earth sucks, Jesus has his hand on all of our shoulders, et cetera) but there is one scientifically valid explanation for gravity, and that is the explanation we give in science class. Likewise, I'm sure there are other explanations for the variety of life on the planet other than evolution: scientifically invalid ones.
By all means, teach them that Christianity disagrees with scientific thought... in a social studies or religion class, where it's appropriate.

I agree with you that skepticism is important in science (and critical thinking in general). However, I think the big problem with this bill is that it explicitly calls evolution a "controversial scientific topic". Evolution is not controversial. Biologists may argue about the details of how evolution happens, but they don't dispute that evolution does happen. Just as bad, this bill lists "human cloning" along with evolution and climate change, which is very misleading. Human cloning is a technology, not a line of scientific inquiry like evolution and climate change are. And it is controversial for ethical and moral reasons, entirely unlike evolution and climate change. So yes, skepticism is good, but the language and assumptions used in this bill seem to me to be rather bad.

Because teaching that evolution is wrong is lying and "making things up", no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. Teaching kids to see both sides of an issue is all fine and good, but teaching them that anti-intellectual dogma deserves to be placed on the same plane as established scientific fact is not, and the reason this is so important is because children don't have the innate ability to tell the difference- that's why we have education in the first place.

Because this has nothing to do with keeping an open mind, and is in fact intended to do the exact opposite - to keep minds closed. Now, the chances of this bill becoming law are pretty small, but it is pernicious and will have a chilling effect. Representative Anderson should be ashamed of himself, but I suspect that he is nothing more than a conman without that ability.

Both sides of the issue? What issue? There are no issues to teach! The only possible "controversy" comes from people who are not scientists and have something to lose by believing the prevailing theory. Nobody wants to teach the "controversy" that surrounds gravity; it's only when you contradict what people already believe that you end up with this kind of irrational resistance. What are these "open-minded" teachers supposed to do? Read from a Bible, so that kids are exposed to the fundamentalist Christian doctrine of creationism? That's for religion or philosophy class, not science class. Have the CEO of a multinational corporation come in and deny man-made climate change? That's for a politics class, not a science class. Have some crank who doesn't believe in the moon landings preach his conspiracy theory, as an equal opportunity to teaching physics?

This is bullshit, and the supporters know it. They just want to indoctrinate the kids with their message, rather than allowing only what they see as their opponents being able to indoctrinate the kids. If this were politics, philosophy, or religion class, I'd say, "Yes, that's a very good idea. All viewpoints should be heard." But it's not. It's science class, and science class doesn't lend itself to this kind of "all viewpoints are equally valid" philosophy. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean that you should be able to teach it along side an actual theory.

In order to advance the progress of science, it is useful to have an open mind. However, science isn't *about* keeping an open mind. Science is about taking the current theories of how things work and testing them to see if they are correct. We abandon them (or really, in most cases, incrementally adjust them) when the tests demonstrate that they are incorrect. You could describe this as "keeping an open mind," but it's a very specific *kind* of open mind: a mind that is open to giving up an idea wh

That rather depends on what you mean by open minded. Being prepared to have your explanations demonstrated to be wrong is certainly a prerequesite. Wasting mental power on long debunked claims constantly being dressed up in new clothes is not open mindedness, it's just stupidity.

Creationism is garbage, ID is Creationism in pseudo-scientific clothes, but in fact even more vapid and meaningless than Creationism. I would not count a young biologist as being closed minded for ignoring the mutterings of the likes of Behe and Dembske.

And what criticisms were those? As I said, IC-like systems had been predicted decades before Behe came along. He has provided absolutely nothing to the actual discussion on evolution, he's simply been a voice of pseudo-science. Go read the Dover transcripts. A fucking legal team laid bare just how empty a vessel he is.

And I'll repeat what I said before, he has published nothing in any journal expounding any of this. If he was meaningfully criticizing, why the fuck is it on bookstore shelves and not in

The fact that you are even asking those questions is an indication that you are ignorant of the overwhelming abundance of relevant scientific research in both of those fields (evolutionary biology, and climatology, respectively). Since you are ignorant, you forfeit your credibility to ask those questions in a rhetorical manner, since you are obviously attempting to prove your point by making it appear as if those fields do not have testable hypotheses. They do. You are just too blind to have bothered to

I would recommend doing a basic google search [wikipedia.org] before proposing that evolution's predictions are untestable or unverifiable.

For anyone interested in experimental evolution, one of my favorite long-term and currently running experiments is the E. coli long-term evolution experiment [wikipedia.org]. For more than 20 years the team has been taking regular snapshots (frozen samples) of twelve diverging populations from the same original E. coli culture.

Predictions:
Not all kinds of living things were alive at the same time (no dinosaurs with rabbits in their stomachs).
Transitional creatures existed between whales and a land-dwelling ancestor, and between reptiles and mammals & birds.
Older fossils will generally be of things with simpler body plans, while younger ones will be a mixture (single cell only -> both single and multi-cell).
Genetic and protein sequences will form nested trees of similarity that are very similar to the one created using

This is just the outcome of public provided services and a government increasingly directed by the whims of the majority. I thought that was what everybody here was clamoring for? Freeing the people......if the people just happen to be dumb-shits or irrational? Well that's the bed you've made for yourself, why are you disappointed or put out?

A catch 22, then isn't it? How does one define what a properly functioning public school is? I actually have very little doubt that the sponsors and advocates of this bill in NM would say precisely the same thing as you just did and that this bill is their solution to the problem. Now of course you don't agree, but if you live in NM and your children are going to public school... well, your ideas of what constitutes 'proper functioning public school system; are out and theirs are in.

Your distinction is correct and I fully understand it, however its not at the crux of the matter and in the US there are increasing pushes to move away from a representative democracy to a direct democracy... and in practice the distinction is a pedantic one at best today. In any number of jurisdictions, Kansas comes to mind, representatives be they state legislators or school board members, are elected by majority votes (actually, since we're being anal, more often than not pluralities not majorities). A

It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt.45 and a.38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

Does anyone still actually believe that science coursework below graduate-level material has anything beyond peripheral involvement with the proper growth of scientists? I mean, sure, nearly every scientist goes through it (read on for one notable exception), but let's be honest - high school science classes fail students in the same way that every other high school class fails students:

- There is no experimentation whatsoever. Any "lab" work is done in a rigged environment where students go through the motions laid out by an instructor instead of designing and performing their own experiment from scratch.- There is a one-size-must-fit-all emphasis on abstraction, bookwork, and lecture. This is not how everyone learns best, or even at all.- There is no free association. You see your science teacher (who acts as though he knows everything, when really he just knows everything in the curriculum) and your (clueless) classmates, and that's it. You never interact with people who have conducted / are conducting real research.

We wouldn't be worrying about ideas like Intelligent Design being discussed in school if we had actual science classes. Since science is more of a process than a product, proper science instruction would allow each student to determine for himself that Intelligent Design, healing crystals, etc. are pseudoscience. When you're just telling people that Evolution=FACT; Anthropogenic-Global-Warming=FACT; Creationism=LIE, there's no real intellectual development taking place. A science curriculum whose core is "these are the facts that our expert scientists agree on" is a great way to politicize science by training young minds to rely on entrenched "experts" to tell them the meaning of things.

Fun fact: Francis Collins (THE Francis Collins of the Human Genome Project) is a born-again evangelical christian. He thinks religion is the most important thing in his life. He rejects intelligent design. He was homeschooled by middle-of-the-road christian parents.

Maybe when we talk about science, religion, Intelligent Design, etc. on Slashdot, we could frame our discussion around inspiring people like Collins who manage to find a good balance all on their own. To do otherwise is to basically admit that our schools are brainwashing centers (which they are, but that's another discussion) and that most young minds are powerless to separate fact from fiction on their own (I hope to God they aren't, and if they are, we shouldn't waste money on "science classes" in the first place).

1) Highschool science is not intended to teach science as much as teach the building blocks for performing science. How to follow the scientific method, how to measure properly, use tools, take results and compare them to a hypothesis. Those are valuable skills. Should they be taught earlier?? Maybe. But you can say that about a lot of skills in US schools. Logic being the big one in my mind. But in the end you have to give the students the skills

Does anyone still actually believe that science coursework below graduate-level material has anything beyond peripheral involvement with the proper growth of scientists?

Absolutely, yes. Has it ever occured to you that there is something called "learning"? Your first steps in something new will almost always have not so much in common with what the real thing looks like. Your first steps in driving or flying are a few minutes or hours of theory, far away from a car.

Presenting children with "real science" would very likely not teach them much. Real science is, first of all, fantastically boring to anyone who isn't already fascinated by the subject matter. Days, weeks, months

It will not happen overnight (hell, I have been watching it for 30+ years), but economic prosperity was the US' to lose, and the Religious Right is destroying it, bit by bit.

Once upon a time, I thought that open communication would help empiricism win out over magical thought, but after watching a couple of decades of religious right mumbo jumbo flowing out over the Internet, unperterbed by anything resembling empirical scepticism, I think nothing will penetrate their confirmation bias.

By pandering to our population's basest fears, they are systematically destroying the ability of one generation to teach the next how to think critically, and disrupting our ability to maintain science and math competence. We're toast, and it is time to acknowledge that, as the primitives dance around celebrating the 100th birthday of their harbinger, Ronald Reagan.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Those who chose a medieval future chose it for themselves, not for everyone. What's more, they are volunteering their many future helpless spawn to be economic prisoners of the minority who chose a reality-based reality.

This is only one example. It is long term crap like insisting upon "abstinence only" sex education, when it is plainly obvious from all data that it causes significant numbers of unwanted pregnancies, that convinces me that we are on a long generational slide.

Trying to outbreed the lunatics will never work - very few women not raised in ignorance by a misogynistic culture would consent to having a dozen or so chidren. Again, data show that women who are well educated have much fewer children.

Modern Islam is not exactly a hotbed for scientific exploration and discovery, the reverse is true. This has not always been the case however as you'll probably know. While Europe was ravaged by norsemen and later held by the leash by restrictive and vindictive Christian churches in the early middle ages, the Islamic world was a place where scientific curiosity was not only allowed but even encouraged [wikipedia.org]. Standing on the shoulders of earlier scientists from eg. Greece, India and China, scholars in the Islamic world produced many works which are still held in high regard. This was the Islamic golden age [wikipedia.org].

And then, something happened. Religious intolerance [meforum.org] was probably one of the factors in the decline of scientific discovery in the Islamic world, led by theologists like Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059-1111) who used the tools of the philosophers to undermine philosophical and scientific inquiry.

Of course these developments happened in a span of centuries, not decades. It would not surprise me though if the decline of scientific learning in the Islamic world started just like it seems to happen in the United States of America, by religious zealots trying to undermine and discredit science and scientists and subverting science teaching to their own purposes.

...of personal agendas getting shoehorned into every aspect of life. Quite frankly if I wanted my kids taught creationism in school, I'd enroll them in a parochial school. That's what they're there for. If you want to teach creationism, get a job at a parochial school. Otherwise, keep your petty agenda to yourself.

I'm sick and tired of these people and their fucking stupid and insane religious beliefs, can anyone think of a way we can get them to be like those idiot comet cultists in Los Angeles back in the 90s? You know the ones I'm talking about, the group where the men cut their own balls off and then everyone ate a bunch of Jello pudding that had been laced with tranquilizers and they all died. Can we get the Evangelical Christoids to start doing this? Tell them that their penises and testicles are evil and that they need to cut them off so that they won't sin, and then get them to believe that Jesus wants them to overdose on tranquilizers and that they'll go to Heaven and bring about the Rapture if they do?

As an educator you have a special duty to teach established knowledge and valuable skills; I find it highly dubious that a teacher's personal opinions, political or religious, fall in to that category.

And, while it is arguably true that you should teach the children a healthy scepticism and critical thinking, I suspect this principle is only applied to the so-called "controversial" sciences, not to the Biblical myths or the right-wing agenda of that sort of teacher. If this was really about critical thinking, then they should teach the children why the Christian mythologies are implausible.

The people who try to promote intelligent design do not point out any weaknesses in the theory of evolution. They present a series of rhetorical, non-scientific arguments (some would say lame excuses) not to believe in evolution because some people find it uncomfortable to believe. ID is junk science and has no place in a science classroom.